Ethical frameworks are generally formulated on the basis of reason, duty, or the greatest good; or even, for some, in terms of self-interest. Love seems to have little direct relevance here. Yet, the relation of love emerges as a crucial element in the ethical reflections of the French philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas. For Levinas the personal, ethical and political relation between the self and the other is central: these relations are founded on or conditioned by love. For Levinas the inter-human relation, named by him the face-to-face relation, is the most important philosophical issue – the first issue that philosophy should address. The face of the other calls the self to take responsibility for the other so that we are all and each responsible for the other, even before ourselves. The face-to-face relation reveals our responsibility to put the other's needs before our own.

This formulation of our ethical responsibility is intertwined in various crucial ways, in Levinas's work, with both the issue of love and that of sexual difference. For Levinas all ethical social relations are an expression of love. He even suggests that ‘responsibility for my neighbor … is … the harsh name for what we call love of one's neighbor’ (Levinas 1998b: 103). This claim reveals a link between Levinas's ethics and his reflections on love. In addition, Levinas investigates and articulates various other forms of love – and these, it turns out, are all related in some way to the selfless, ethical, love of the neighbour. Throughout his works Levinas discusses not only ethical love but also maternal, erotic, and paternal love.